Anthem is a book that was written by Ayn Rand in 1938. The setting is in a communist community in the future where man has entered another dark age. One man in the community, Equality 7-2521, is different from all his brothers and tells himself that he is cursed because he speaks unspeakable things and wishes for things no men wish for. The community they all live in has many rules and nobody has any freedom. The new society that Equality will create will have three main rules that are free agency, anyone can think anything, and you can refer to yourself as “I” and not “We”. The first rule in Anthem is that nobody has agency. The community has a place called the Palace of Mating. “This is the time each spring when all men older than twenty and all the women older than eighteen are sent for one night to the City Palace of Mating. And each of the men have one woman assigned to them by the Council of Eugenics. Children are born each winter, but women never see their children and children never know their parents”(Rand 41). In this quote it shows that the man and woman do not get to choose who to mate with and what is worse is that the parents do not get to see their child. Equality will not have this rule because it is wrong and people do not get to choose who to mate with or mate at all. Equality will also not have this rule because he respects agency and choice even though they could lead to bad. Even though if someone makes a bad choice, that helps that individual to grow
